Wednesday

Elaine Equi is the author of many books including Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems and most recently, Click and Clone, from Coffee House Press. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and several editions of Best American Poetry. She teaches at New York University and in the MFA programs at The New School and City College. Ken Tucker wrote in Entertainment Weekly that, “Equi is one cool dude.”

Ron Padgett’s books include the poetry collections How Long, How to Be Perfect, You Never Know, Great Balls of Fire, and New & Selected Poems, as well as three memoirs, Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan; Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers; and Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard. Padgett is also the editor of The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms and World Poets. His translations include Blaise Cendrars’ Complete Poems, Guillaume Apollinaire’s Poet Assassinated, Valery Larbaud’s Poems of A. O. Barnabooth (with Bill Zavatsky), and Yu Jian’s Flash Cards (with Wang Ping). He has collaborated with artists such as Jim Dine, Alex Katz, George Schneeman, and Joe Brainard. For ten years he worked as a poet-on-the-schools, and for twenty years he was the publications director of Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Padgett has received Fulbright, NEA, Guggenheim, and Civitella Ranieri grants and fellowships, and was named Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. In 2008 he was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He also received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. For more information, go to www.ronpadgett.com.